From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Jul 29 1997 - 16:19:34 MDT
Mark Crosby wrote:
>
>"A swarm of suveillance mites slowly descends from the sky ... they
>assemble and process the information into a detailed picture of the
>state of the atmosphere".
>
>"the technology necessary for constructing a 'smart dust particle' may
>be within reach in 5 years, says Berlin."
>
>"By merging sensing and actuation with computation and communication,
>MEMS [microelectriomechanical systems] devices can be distributed
>throughout the environment,
>"'How do you program a cloud of dust?'
Subsumption architectures generate an emergent swarm behavior. Genetic
algorithms can also operate on the subsumptive program itself.
Berlin asks.
>How do units synchronize their activities when they are in motion
>relative to each other and spread over large distances? How can
>communication be established and maintained in such a system?
Via cellular automata-style interaction with nearest neighbors, perhaps
overridden with acoustic SIMD or global instructions. In any case, one
has to forego absolute, deterministic control.
>IMO, these are many of the same hard problems that must be solved for
>AI and nanotechnology. MEMS seem to be a practical, near-term test bed
>for experimenting on some of these problems.
Yes it certainly is, but one problem with MEMS is high defect and
failure rates, with the 'dust' for example.
Forrest Bishop
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